


By Nature A Pragmatic Girl

by aldiara



Category: Alles was zaehlt
Genre: Alles was zählt - Freeform, Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-01
Updated: 2010-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vanessa watches Roman and Deniz kiss goodbye. (ep 336)</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Nature A Pragmatic Girl

The January air is cold and unforgiving on Vanessa Steinkamp’s heated cheeks, but that isn’t the reason something just went cold inside her: a secret something, damp and unpleasant, as she looks across the parking lot, watching her best friend and his lover say goodbye.

Like lovers everywhere, they are oblivious; to the cold, the noise of the protestors at the construction site, to anyone who might be watching. People in love are supremely annoying like that. Vanessa frowns, struggling with the sudden pit of deep upset that’s opened up beneath her; this flare of hurt she has no business feeling.

She doesn’t do this.

She is by nature a pragmatic girl, and all too aware that happiness is an elusive beast at the best of times – especially for someone like her, who combines all the baggage of a snooty aristocrat heritage with none of the supposed perks: refinement, elegance, cool wit.

Instead, she has created her own Ruby Gloom street-sass persona, not because she knows that everybody loves an underdog, but because she looks at the world squarely and knows that the only chance she stands of being happy is to live unapologetically. She has no grace nor delicacy, having decided long ago that these are smoke screens she can do without; but she’s never quite managed to shake an inconvenient fondness for the very attributes she spurns.

It shouldn’t surprise her, then, that the things she knows she has no part in are the things she looks at longingly.

Like this: Four hands, fingers tangling furtively on top of a purple scarf, darting up to brush each other’s cheeks, ears, hair, as if to imprint memories enough to store against the coming weeks of absence. Lips parting, only to dive straight back in for another kiss, playful and carelessly adoring.

There is a knack she has, for seeing small things others don’t, and being moved by them. A hand brushing back hair in thoughtless grace, an honest laugh, a lovely expression in an otherwise unlovely face. She can’t help valuing things that are less than common, because she sees in them the merit that she hopes others might find in her.

Like this: They smile into their kisses, as if there was a secret joke to this that no one’s privy to but them. Roman’s back is turned to her, so she can’t see more than a crinkle at the corner of one eye, but she can see Deniz all too clearly against the crisp winter sky – head dipped to make up for the height difference, dark lashes lowered, ears red with cold. The corner of his mouth is hitched up in a tiny, furtive smile as he brushes his lips gently over Roman’s. It looks familiar, that smile, and Vanessa cocks her head, trying to place it.

It serves no practical purpose, this knack of observation, other than to trip herself up at inopportune moments, or, like now, to entangle her in feelings that she doesn’t want.

“Honestly now, Vanessa,” Nina speaks up from beside her, gentler than her usual inquisitive brashness. “You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”

Vanessa frowns, still watching that secret half-smile, until she finally recognises it, and almost laughs. She saw that same smile steal across Deniz’s face a few months ago, when she was sitting with him on the ping-pong table and listening to him describe his first kiss with a boy. It is a hidden smile, a treasure smile, a smile she has no part in, and yet she was the first person that he shared it with.

Life is a mean, sarcastic, evil cunt. This is not news to her.

“Yeah, I guess I have,” she finally replies to Nina’s question, although it isn’t Nina that she speaks to: it’s herself who needs to hear this acknowledgement, straight up and in unadorned terms, so that she can look at it plainly and then figure out how to tuck it away for good.


End file.
